


This Galaxy I’ll Take

by Somaybelikeno



Series: Ships, the Stars and the Galaxy [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Force Bond (Star Wars), Hurt/Comfort, Literal Sleeping Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 21:42:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13257213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somaybelikeno/pseuds/Somaybelikeno
Summary: As Rey exits the cockpit, her hand unconsciously reaches out and trails over a nick in the doorframe. Ben 11. She gazes down to the name etched into the cold durasteel then lets her eyes travel up, knowing exactly where to place his height as an adult man.A post TLJ sequel to Ships and Stars.





	This Galaxy I’ll Take

**Author's Note:**

> I still can’t believe that TLJ confirmed the Force bond and that we got so much new Reylo material! I’m over the moon about this movie!
> 
> This story is a follow up to the a short fic I wrote over a year ago, Ships and Stars. It’s probably a good idea to read that one first to understand certain parts of this story, but it’s not a must. I’d appreciate it if you did though. :)
> 
> I have the proofreading skills of a dead slug so huge thanks to applesith and tehanufromearthsea for being my beta readers! Your comments and suggestions are always welcome!

She remembers when war and battle was just another daydream, a means to take her mind off the endless chore of scavenging for her food. It’s funny just how fast it all went from child's play to cold hard reality. A droid had entered her world, and suddenly Rey had been at war.

The pieces of Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber are warm against her palms, as if the force it took to break it is still sizzling inside its core. It takes a lot to break kyber in two. She once thought the same of herself.

The stars against black space fill every part of the Falcon’s viewport. Rey stares without really seeing, nostalgic for something that never even happened. The dreams she used to harbour for her future, things she believed about her past. It all just turned out so different. She’s forgotten her yearning for the stars. They are all giants alright, just as she’d been told as a child. Some of them are even monsters.

Chewie relieves her of her duties, taking her place at the helm. As Rey exits the cockpit, her hand unconsciously reaches out and trails over a nick in the doorframe. Ben 11. She gazes down to the name etched into the cold durasteel then lets her eyes travel up, knowing exactly where to place his height as an adult man.

The main hold is layered with the quiet sounds of the remaining Resistance members. Those who are awake murmur their conversations between each other so they won’t disturb the ones who are sleeping. Rey treads unnoticed between them, a ghost in their midst. She finds Finn propped upright at the foot-end of where his unconscious friend lies, his head at an odd angle against the wall. He’s been hovering around Rose’s unmoving form ever since they left Crait, but now his face is peaceful in sleep.

_Good_ , Rey thinks, with an ache in her chest. _Rest now. We’re gonna need it._

Leia crosses her path as she enters the passage to the the crew quarters. Something about Rey must have caught the general’s attention because Leia places a ringed hand on her arm and softly says her name. Her tone sounds familiar somehow, even if Rey’s never been spoken to in that way before. A mother’s tone, warm and comforting.

“I need to hide,” Rey says, and nearly chokes on her own words, because that’s what _he_ would have said. Somehow she knows. Far too often the world became just too much, and this is what he used to tell his mother when he needed to get away from it all.

Leia regards her with burgeoning comprehension in her eyes. “There’s no one in the crew quarters,” she says. Everyone on board has chosen to stay in the main hold. Now that they’re so few of them left, there’s not that many who willingly chooses solitude.

The crew quarters are silent, and whatever quiet murmuring there is on the ship is shut out as the door closes behind Rey. She’s standing on the edge of the bed before she even knows what she’s doing, her hands reaching for the hatch in the ceiling. Her body remembers what her mind has forgotten a long time ago. She’d stopped coming to this place a few years after she found it. Unkar Plutt had caught her and she’d gone without food for a week. After that Rey had thought twice about exploring the new ships in his yard.

She lets the hatch down gently, making sure it doesn’t make a ruckus and disturb anyone else on the Falcon. Then she balls the single pillow and blanket from the bed together and shoves them into the hole over her head. With the ease of someone who’s climbed the insides of ships much bigger than this one many times before she pulls herself up into the dark space.

Her head knocks against hard durasteel immediately. Rey bites back the yelp of pain and puts her palm against the smarting area, hurt that this place which had once been a safe hiding spot now greets her so rudely upon her return. The compartment is smaller than what it was ten years ago — but no, that’s not true. She’s the one who grew up.

Rey closes the hatch after herself. The blanket is heavy wool, a comforting weight that settles on her as she wraps herself in it and lays her head on the pillow. She can’t stretch her feet out in this small space so she curls into a loose fetal position.

Sleep doesn’t come easily. The floor is hard underneath her, but that has never been a problem before. She’s slept soundly hidden away in the bellies of star destroyers many times, and they’re all hard surfaces and unforgiving corners. Sometimes she’d scavenged so deep that finding her way back out into the sunbaked sand plains of Jakku again took more than a day.

Her busy mind won’t allow her exhausted body to rest. Yawning, Rey reaches one hand up to the ceiling and searches for the tiny bulbs embedded there. The round forms are smooth against her fingertips. Just a tiny flick of the Force against the switch she knows is in the corner and the constellations come alight. In the same moment she’s no longer alone.

As if revealed by the light of his own stars, _he’s_ there. Ben’s huge body fills the space of what had once been his hideout, curved in a half moon shape around where Rey is curled up. She doesn’t freeze exactly, but her heart skips a beat. His closed eyes move under their lids, and his jaw is tense. Even in sleep he’s not fully able to relax. He lies besides her in the same singed and damaged clothes he’d worn on the Supremacy, as if he’d been too tired to get them off before falling into bed.

A low sound comes from Ben’s throat, hoarse and thin, and almost fragile. He shifts as if reacting to some change in the air, and then opens his eyes.

Too close. Rey can’t look at him. Can’t take in his sleep puffed face, and how open he looks in those few seconds after waking up. The traces of pain she’d thought she’d be enough to wipe away. Strands of hair hang into his face, and his eyes are red-rimmed. Like the child she no longer is she retreats under her blanket and hides there. She isn’t prepared for this, especially now. But then again, she never is.

“Are we dreaming together now?” His voice comes muffled through the barrier of the woven wool, sounding low and drowsy.

“No.” She dares a peek, and finds him struggling to stay awake, his eyes opening and closing again and again, exhausted and bereft. He looks confused.

“Why, Rey?” he says, and his mouth twists into some hybrid between anger and unhappiness. “I offered you the galaxy. Why?” His eyes slide shut on the last question as if of their own accord, like he’s failing the battle against his own human need to rest. He’s mumbling, his words slurred, and in the end he falls still.

Ben’s breath falls on her in warm puffs, wafting across her exposed forehead. She inches out from under her blanket again to get a good look at him. It wouldn’t take much to even move her nose against his. His fringe is almost tickling her hairline.

There’s no one in the crew quarters who would hear, but she whispers her reply anyway. “I didn’t want the galaxy, I wanted you.”

He shifts, makes a low hum, and smacks his lips in his sleep. His face is now lax, but there’s still a frown between his brows. Her thumb would fit against it if she reached out. She could smooth it down with just a touch.

Ben twitches. “Where are you, Rey?” he murmurs, his eyes still closed.

In any other instant it could be a request to know their location, him trying to find the Resistance and snuff them out once and for all. But here and now it’s not so. The meaning of his question comes so clear through the bond. He’s an open book in his sleep. Rey knows he’s just asking for her.

And she’s so tired. An exhaustion of a very different kind than what she’d experienced as a small girl desperate for something that could buy her her next meal. It’s not just in her bones and mind. It’s a weary sort of ache has settled in her chest. They’ve lost so many in such a short time. The grief of the Resistance’s survivors permeates the walls of the Millenium Falcon in a way Rey has never been able to sense before. Han and Luke, her faith that she would ever see her family again, all gone. And she so desperately believed Ben would be here beside her at the end of it all.

She reaches for him, slowly, and gently touches a finger to the back of his ungloved hand, watching as his face takes on the light of the hidden compartment and not whatever cold quarters he sleeps in.

“I’m right here.”

His eyes flutter open again. In a daze Ben looks from her to the ceiling. His own starlit sky under his father’s roof. He blinks, more than once as if he can’t really make sense of it, but then comprehension dawns and he — he _lights_ up. Something like a grin ghosts across his features. “I thought you said you didn’t want my galaxy,” he says, then succumbs to the heaviness of his eyelids once more.

Rey huffs. There he is, she thinks. Just a glimpse of the person she thought she might find underneath his armour. In another life he could be merely irritating.

He doesn’t wake again, but like some unconscious need he hooks a finger around the one she has pressed against his hand, taking no more than what she already offered.

In the dark Rey whispers to him of the girl who found his hideout. Of the travels and adventures she’d imagined they’d have once the owners of this ship came to collect it. Of how they’d find every single star in the galaxy and visit their worlds. She whispers until she can’t anymore; until her mouth turns to cotton because it can’t provide enough saliva. At one point she opens her eyes only to wonder at what point did they close in the first place.

Ben sleeps quietly, his face every bit the carefree boy that Rey had once imagined. That troubled frown has disappeared, and his chest rises and falls in a slow and even rhythm. His finger tightens around hers for just a moment then relaxes again as if reassured that she’s still there.

“Goodnight, Ben,” Rey says, her voice barely more than a whisper.

Until I see you again.

She falls asleep to the sound of his breath. When she wakes he is gone and the lights in the ceiling are out.

**Author's Note:**

> As always comments and kudos are truly appreciated. Happy new year to you all!
> 
> I’m somaybelikeno on tumblr. :)


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